One of the key benefits of a sandboxed software marketplace is security: the owner of the marketplace can vet the software that is uploaded to it for vulnerabilities. But 18 months later, Epic also published Fortnite to the Google Play store, subjecting the game to that in-app purchase fee.Īs I describe in the below Twitter thread, Fortnite’s Android launch outside of Google Play was fraught: the original Fortnite installer featured a serious security vulnerability, which was actually discovered by the Android engineering team. Substantial daylight exists between Apple and Google on this particular policy choice.Īnd in fact, Epic did launch Fortnite for Android outside of Google Play with a standalone installer in an attempt to sidestep Google’s platform fee. In contrast, Google just recently announced that it would provide further support for third-party app stores on Android while more strictly enforcing the commercial policy on Google Play that extracts its 30% platform fee from in-app purchases. Google is trying to have Epic’s lawsuit against it dismissed for this reason: Google contends that the case doesn’t overlap with Apple’s because of its allowance for direct, non-Google Play app distribution, and thus the anti-trust allegations against it have no merit.Įpic’s argument against Apple is that Apple exerts monopoly control over the iOS ecosystem by forcing developers to publish through the App Store. Background on these lawsuits can be found here.īoth Google and Apple enforce similar rules for apps within their app store environments, but one fundamental policy approach differentiates iOS from Android: Google allows for app distribution outside of Google Play on Android, and Apple does not. Epic’s lawsuit against Apple garners vastly more media attention than Epic’s lawsuit against Google, the complaint for which was launched for the very same reason on the very same day: Epic added proprietary payments to Fortnite on both Google Play and the App Store, after which the game was promptly removed from both platforms for contravening policy. ![]() ![]() Earlier this week, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California heard arguments in Epic’s anti-trust lawsuit against Apple.
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